Jeff Probst Reveals ‘Survivor’ Once Lost a Major Piece of Equipment: ‘It Was Shipwrecked’
Survivor is one of the entertainment industry’s longest-running and most successful reality shows. Exciting and full of adventure, Survivor has been going strong since 2000. Jeff Probst has been there throughout the show’s run. He has hosted the series, guiding contestants and giving viewers an inside look at how the series is made and brought to TV.
Survivor recently launched a companion podcast to the show, On Fire with Jeff Probst. Of course, Probst hosts the podcast. He offers up interesting anecdotes and stories about the filming of the series. In a recent episode, Probst opened up about how the production team designs challenges. He revealed they lost an expensive piece of equipment at one point.
Jeff Probst opened up about doing challenges on water
One of the hallmarks of Survivor is the challenges. These challenges are designed to allow contestants to test their physical and mental endurance. They can often be swimming tests and puzzles.
Interestingly, the water-based challenges are the most difficult for the production team to design. In a recent episode of On Fire with Jeff Probst, the longtime host opened up about how tough it is to ensure that the water-based challenges go off without a hitch.
“We’ve refined (the process) for creating challenges over the years,” Probst said. He revealed that challenges generally take several weeks to design and execute, but the water-based challenges tend to be much more complex. “Those are elaborate…(it can take) four or five weeks to make that,” he said. He revealed that the team usually uses a huge concrete block and a series of weights and anchors to create water-based challenges.
What did Jeff Probst reveal about losing a barge during the filming of ‘Survivor’?
Even though the Survivor team works with several tools to secure any necessary props during water-based challenges, Probst pointed out that the ocean’s tide can cause some issues. “We’ve lost things,” he said. “We lost a barge. One of our favorite barges that we’ve used for years. It was secured out there, and we were going to use it, and I think what happened was the main anchor line got cut on a rock and the barge started floating.”
Probst went on to detail how “We showed up the next morning, and the barge was gone. The rain was bad, and it had been storming…the rain cleared, and they started looking, and they couldn’t find it.”
Eventually, the team found the missing barge. As Probst said, “It was shipwrecked, about 15 miles away, halfway on its nose…we retrieved it and still use it today. Now we have trackers on every boat, every barge…so now if we lose it, we can find it.”
What does the ‘Survivor’ dream team do?
Survivor is a massive operation. Even though everything looks seamless onscreen, a lot of testing goes into all the challenges. The show employs a “dream team” to set up and test the challenges. Those on the team need to be up for anything, including doing fieldwork to prepare for events, working in uncomfortable weather conditions, and ensuring that challenges are feasible for contestants to complete.
As one former member of the “dream team,” Heimata Hall, told Business Insider, being on the team is a lot like being a contestant — without many of the negatives associated with actually competing, such as bugs or hunger. “It’s a great place to step outside your comfort zone and discover yourself,” Hall said.
